Saturday, March 1, 2014

New paper shows fire activity at end of 20th century was low in comparison to past 2000 years

A new paper under review for Climate of the Past reconstructs fire activity of the Northern Hemisphere over the past 2000 years, and finds fire activity was very low toward the end of the 20th century in comparison to the past. The authors find the greatest fire acitivity and droughts occurred from 1000–1300 AD and 1500–1700 AD, but show that fire activity at the end of the record in 2000 was unusually low.

Three proxies of fire activity all show very low levels at the end of the 20th century.